Brief thoughts on the “Google memo”

&gt; However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “incorrect assumptions.”<p>This is quite well-put, and gets at the heart of what pisses people off.<p>There exists a large set of hypotheses which are plausible, and not just &quot;spaghetti-monster God&quot; plausible, but &quot;&gt; 20% chance this is the case&quot; plausible.<p>Many of those hypotheses, however, are shouted down as &quot;racist&quot;, &quot;sexist&quot;, or some other &quot;ist&quot; when they come up, and all of their possible costs are then listed in a litany, with all possible benefits ignored.<p>It&#x27;s intellectually stifling, and I&#x27;m no longer interested in enabling people who use that kind of rhetoric.

&gt; This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it<p>It would be so very refreshing to hear a company just say &quot;let&#x27;s not throw incendiary memos around at work; it upsets people&quot;, instead of feeding the fire with a rationalized social stance.<p>Actually, I _have_ seen great CEO&#x27;s defuse situations like this. I don&#x27;t understand why it&#x27;s not done more often.

I previously mentioned that in a previous life, I worked myself thru school --somewhat blue collar jobs.<p>People, predominantly older black and white, under-educated, had quite a few views people who go beyond high school might consider offensive or ignorant and stereotyping: about race, aptitude, gender, sexuality, weight, promiscuity, prowess, etc.<p>You know what --people worked, they joked, occasionally scuffled --and got over it. They made their money, they saved, they retired.<p>It could have been better. It could have been more professional. It could have been nice and bland (in a good way)<p>You know one thing people didn&#x27;t shy away from was strong opinions on things, one way or the other. No one got fired for cursing, or being un-PC. You&#x27;d get sacked for theft, but they called their managers and bosses asses all the time. I can&#x27;t imagine Googlers calling their bosses arseholes [even if deserved]<p>I sometimes miss blue collar candor. Of course, when you&#x27;re in it, it gets tiresome, redundant and unproductive.

I find the idealism present in this thread both sweet and optimistic, and simultaneously incredibly naive. In a way, it&#x27;s SV&#x2F;startup culture in a nutshell. &quot;Anything is possible if we work together and use our brains!&quot;.... &quot;Move fast and break things!&quot;... &quot;What could possibly go wrong?&quot;<p>The reality is that we are only a generation from a time when not hiring black people or women for jobs requiring intelligence or competence was standard operating procedure and saying out loud &quot;You really think hiring a black&#x2F;female engineer is a good idea?&quot; would not have been considered especially controversial. Our parents (or grandparents for some of you) lived through this time, saw the incredible damage it did to millions of people, and wisely decided to seal it away with a powerful ward (laws + social taboo). This is of course an oversimplification of a process that started long ago and is not finished - but it will have to suffice as a metaphor.<p>Keep in mind, this process was (and is) a hard fought war with many casualties - friendships, families, and of course actual lost lives. When I chastise my 73 year old father for not being progressive enough, he reminds me that his mother, who grew up during the depression in the south, did not consider black people to be human. His outspoken support for civil rights caused a major rift in their relationship that never healed before she died.<p>Of course there are costs to this ward of taboos - as well as the similar ones we are presently building around LGBT people. Any time an avenue of discussion is cut off, we are all slightly poorer for it. I would argue however that we know what is behind that ward - awful things that hurt people - and I would argue that right now, it is just not worth it. Maybe in a century we will be ready to have more frank conversations about sex, gender, and race, but I am pretty sure we are not ready now.

The core of what he is asking, and failed to drilled into sufficiently in my view, is exactly what the OP says: what % of the gender gap in various fields can be explained (within that field specifically) due to demographically correlated population preferences vs other factors.<p>I think there are two unforced errors:<p>- Trying to tie things back to causation due to biological factors gave cherry pickers sufficient ammo to snipe him as some kind of supremacist, sexist, bigot, whatever. Explaining causation was unnecessary for his argument. All that was needed was highlighting statistical correlations measured on demographics which could influence career choice. The question then reduces down to &quot;do these correlations actually influence career choice or not&quot; not anything about causation. From there, it&#x27;s easy to ask &quot;if so, how much? Zero is an acceptable answer.&quot;<p>- He should have made a good faith argument of what the world looks like if you assume these demographically correlated attributes have no effect. It was important that he really highlight other potential explanations, since to people who disagree with his premise fundamentally, &quot;extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.&quot; Once illustrated, leave it to readers to decide on the absurdity or validity of that counter example. Some would consider it a sufficient &quot;proof&quot; by counter example to make his point, others would not be convinced but at least could digest his argument more likely as one of good faith not bigotry.<p>In general, a lack of empathy for the lens through which his biggest, most vocal critic will read his argument was his undoing. The best path to having this discussion (regardless of merit) would be to continually buttress the argument on all sides with qualifiers and signs of good faith to those who will read it in the worst possible light. He did some of that, but not nearly enough.

Yes, there may or may not be biological differences. Or cultural differences. In fact, it&#x27;s almost certainly both, and it really doesn&#x27;t matter.<p>The single most important argument people like this ex-Googler never seem to understand is that they&#x27;re confusing what is with what ought to be.<p>If there&#x27;s one defining characteristic of humanity, it&#x27;s our ability to overcome biology (the &#x27;hardware&#x27;,so to speak), using our unique &#x27;software&#x27; of self-awareness and abstract reasoning.<p>Even if there were jobs that women were less qualified for, or had less interest in, we would want lower the difference, with equal representation if possible.<p>Take politics as an easy example: it&#x27;s a profession that is closely associated with a bunch of stereotypical &#x27;male&#x27; characteristics, such as the pursuit of power and the willingness to engage in conflict.<p>BUT: even if women as a group had a lower propensity to seek elected office, they still have an interest in being represented somewhat proportionally.<p>That argument easily extends to leadership positions in the private sector, and it has become relevant for the IT industry because of the growing power of technology over all aspects of life.

&quot;Intellectual honesty&quot; -- that&#x27;s the phrase I couldn&#x27;t think of. It seems to me the stronger the condemnation the greater degree to which his arguments were misrepresented.

I don&#x27;t understand why it&#x27;s such big news. No matter what&#x27;s in it, it&#x27;s just some random guy who happens to work at google. It&#x27;s not a senior exec, it&#x27;s not an official google position, it&#x27;s.... nothing. I just don&#x27;t understand why what this guy thinks warrants discussion?

Author does good here, but perpetuates the same mistake most people talking about the memo do:<p>There were additional sections after the &quot;hypothesis&quot;, which had specific policy suggestions--most of which were aimed at helping the situation for a broader class of people and for improving visibility into the process. That somehow keeps getting missed.

The real tragedy in the discussion is this assumption, quoted from the OP:<p><i>&quot;His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and&#x2F;or qualified for a Google job than men&quot;</i><p>Empathy and social intelligence are actively disqualifying factors for a job at Google, or software in general? That is so wrong on so many levels.<p>I really like Bob Wyman&#x27;s take on this:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@bobwyman&#x2F;back-in-the-1970s-when-i-first-got-in-the-software-business-i-remember-there-being-a-much-higher-f70e8197fbd9" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@bobwyman&#x2F;back-in-the-1970s-when-i-first-...</a>

&gt; 2. Say “This topic is harmful to people and we shouldn’t discuss it” (a little draconian maybe, but at least intellectually honest)<p>This is so wrong in so many ways. Don&#x27;t call back in question that the universe was created in 7 day, that the earth is flat, global warming etc. Because it is harmful to believers ?<p>It&#x27;s not just a difference in personality. It&#x27;s a difference in behavioral and intellectual capability. Denying or repressing it is plain stupid. This essay proves that something is totally wrong in the way people handle this issue. But this is sadly not a surprize.

What happened to the good old days of vim vs emacs?<p>The real basilisk is believing basilisks exist. Heterodoxy strengthens us all and if you chose to exclude the smart people because their thoughts are unhelpful, or patently offensive, you might find yourself without any allies when you need them most.

I think very few men even if they agree with point 1, would dare advocate that at their workplaces for fear of getting fired.

&gt; However, his overall claim that there exist personality differences between genders that differentially affect men’s and women’s interest in and aptitude for tech jobs, is what people are mostly getting mad at. And that’s a claim that seems plausibly true. Not obviously true, but also not a claim you would be justified in emphatically dismissing as false, as many people have, including Google, who called them “incorrect assumptions.”<p>I&#x27;m sorry, the last sentence is not true - Pichai was very careful not to say which parts of the memo were &quot;incorrect assumptions&quot;.

Note that Sundar Pichai is very clearly in category 2, i.e. he does not dismiss the memo as untruthful or expressly voices disagreement.<p>What irks me is that the discussion in the main stream media ignores the fact that someone was fired for writing relevant information in a forum explicitely introduced by the employer to anonymously voicing workplace opinions (a &quot;safe space&quot;), not by &quot;circulating a memo&quot;. Maybe discussions in this forum can be restricted to arguments about whether the fried chicken was particularly bad today.

&gt; His hypothesis implies that personality differences mean a smaller percentage of women will be interested in and&#x2F;or qualified for a Google job than men, but that doesn’t mean any of the women at Google fall below the “qualified” threshold.<p>I think its fair to say that not everyone shares that view.<p>This is probably the key to controversy in my mind. You could read it that way.<p>However, you can choose to interpret the sections about &#x27;Hiring practices which can effectively lower the bar for “diversity” candidates by decreasing the false negative rate&#x27; and &#x27;Alienating conservatives is both non-inclusive and generally bad business because conservatives tend to be higher in conscientiousness, which is required for much of the drudgery and maintenance work characteristic of a mature company.&#x27; as &#x27;some people we&#x27;re hiring don&#x27;t cut it, we should hire more white men&#x27;.<p>That&#x27;s not what it says. You don&#x27;t have to interpret it that way.<p>...but clearly <i>a lot of people did</i>.<p>My advice? Stop defending it. You can talk about these issues <i>without</i> this memo.<p>Forget the memo. The memo was stupid and misguided. Releasing it internally at work was unreservedly stupid. ...but what&#x27;s done is done.<p>Do you want to spend the next year talking about the memo, and the specifics of &#x27;did it or did it not <i>technically</i> say such and such&#x27;, or the actual issues he was trying to raise?

Recycling (and slightly modifying) a previous comment [0]:<p>Certain topics, that otherwise might be interesting to discuss, are surrounded by minefields. One such topic is the distribution of intellectual ability within subgroups of the population. This minefield was not put in place by a repressive government. Nor was it secretly put in place overnight by a fanatic band of social-justice zealots.<p>My observation, which I will offer without citation, is that this particular minefield was put in place, mine by mine, over a period of decades, through a process of fairly broad societal consensus.<p>To those who suggest clearing the minefield, thus permitting this topic to be discussed freely in public, I will invoke the principle of Chesterton&#x27;s fence [1]: Before you talk of removing the mines, you need to show that you understand why the minefield was created in the first place, and you need to explain why now is the time to remove it.<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14970661" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=14970661</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Wikipedia:Chesterton%27s_fence</a>

&gt; 1)&#x2F;[sic]he never made a case for why we shouldn’t think other factors are even bigger<p>Really? The memo wasn&#x27;t about answering life&#x27;s questions, but to propose narrow solutions with based on pointed evidence. Preference or not, attacking the hypothesis because you want a different one answered is idiotic and is not a proper response. It&#x27;s basically a common SJW ad hominem. &quot;You just aren&#x27;t smart enough to understand what&#x27;s going on here!&quot;<p>Julia might want to look at the nordic countries that have pushed the gender gaps even wider with some very sophisticated progressive social policies to prevent other factors.

In addition to people in favor of affirmative action and people opposed to affirmative action, there&#x27;s the large class of people who are in favor of affirmative action, but against the political correctness pressure of having to act like they believe this in for the benefit of all instead of the explicit benefit of the affected minority.

This column is set in a modern edition of Baskerville, one of my all-time favourite typefaces and (unlike Garamond and Optima) one that has now transitioned beautifully to a pixel display. Ironically the first time I saw Baskerville on a screen it was the heavy glyphs of Google&#x27;s early (ca.1998) logo, in which it seemed to me rather flabby and unwell. So it is delightful to see this variant, like an old friend showing up looking happy and healthy. I love the vitality of those broad-shouldered, energetic capitals, and the careful flourishes of the italic form that so gracefully engage us for asides and for emphasis! And that open bowl on the &#x27;g&#x27; for which I am always such a sucker.<p>One day I hope there will be a usable screen variant of Garamond. I&#x27;ve had a tinker and I know it&#x27;s beyond my own very limited design abilities to achieve.<p>The typography of the Google Memo, by contrast, is simply dismal and a sorry reminder of why I don&#x27;t use Google Docs.

I don’t doubt that the writer of the memo had the best of intentions with this memo. And there’s even some parts that I could support.<p>But the main thing that gets to me is the idea of biological differences being partially to blame. He views males as predetermined to be better engineers. And he was a senior engineer who was in a hiring position. Someone who is hiring engineers, that views female engineers as biologically inferior for the job, allows for a system of discriminatory hiring to occur.